1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a player device for tune data and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Tune player equipment having large-capacity storage devices, such as hard disk devices or non-volatile memory, are becoming mainstream. Such player equipment is capable of holding thousands or tens of thousands of tunes.
For example, a hard disk device with 100 GB capacity is capable of saving 3400 tunes or more if we say that the duration of each tune is three minutes. Further, MP3 encoding of the digital audio data compresses the data size down to 1/10 to 1/12 of the original data size, meaning that 40,000 tunes or more can be stored.
Accordingly, such tune player devices allows the user to always have tunes close at hand and even carried around, which can be listened to at will.
However, having so many tunes available in a single player device may cause difficulty for the user to find tunes matching his/her mood or preferences at that particular time.
One method that has been conceived to address this issue is sharing what is known as a playlist. A playlist is a list of tune titles which a user has selected according to his/her own preferences. For example, a user might collect the titles of tunes he/she likes to listen to during beachside drives, and make a list of these to create a “beachside drive” playlist.
Enabling this playlist to be exchanged and viewed among friends and the like can provide individuals with ideas on tunes to select. Accordingly, this method facilitates selection of tunes.
Another method is to form a community of individuals having like preferences and to exchange information. According to this method, members of this community can enjoy the benefits of the broad range of preferences expressed by other members.
Such methods are described in, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-13653 and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004 46575.